Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals:
Operation Last Chance

“Operation:
Last Chance” is a joint project of
the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Targum
Shlishi Foundation of Miami, Florida designed
to assist governments in bringing Nazi
war criminals to justice. It offers financial
rewards of up to 10,000 euros for information,
which will help facilitate the prosecution
and punishment of Holocaust perpetrators,
and has already been launched in Germany,
Austria, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Croatia,
Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

1. Rationale

While the necessity of
bringing those who committed the crimes
of the Holocaust to justice is patently
obvious, the practical difficulties of
achieving this goal are becoming increasingly
difficult as time goes on. Although there
are at least many thousands of individuals
who actively participated in the implementation
of the Final Solution who have never been
prosecuted for their crimes, the chances
of their being held accountable are rapidly
diminishing due to several obvious factors:

the advanced age of the suspects

the advanced age of the potential witnesses
(survivors, bystanders, and/or fellow
perpetrators)

the difficulty in obtaining credible
witnesses for crimes which were committed
many years ago, often in remote and/or
inaccessible locations chosen to insure
secrecy

the lack of political will to prosecute
local Nazi collaborators in numerous
post-Communist societies

the lack of political will to prosecute
immigrant Holocaust perpetrators in some
of the countries of refuge

Under these circumstances,
the Simon Wiesenthal Center believes that
a special effort must be made during the
coming year to maximize the attempts to bring
Nazi war criminals to justice. In order to
contribute its share to achieve this goal,
the Center-together with Targum Shlishi,
a charitable foundation founded and headed
by Aryeh Rubin of Miami, Florida, who conceived
of this project- has decided to launch “Operation:
Last Chance,” a
special program designed and implemented
by Israel Director Dr. Efraim Zuroff to help
identify as many perpetrators and potential
witnesses as quickly as possible and thereby
facilitate the bringing to justice of hereto
unprosecuted Holocaust perpetrators.

2. Implementation

The Simon Wiesenthal Center
is hereby officially announcing its intention
to pay the sum of ten thousand U.S. dollars
($10,000) to any person who submits relevant
information which will lead to the prosecution
and conviction of a Nazi war criminal who
will be punished for his or her crimes. This
offer applies to any Nazi war criminal who
committed his or her crimes during World
War II, regardless of his or her current
place of residence.

Besides press conferences
announcing the launching of “Operation: Last
Chance” in Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn,
ads with details on the project will
appear in the local media. There will
also be a special website for the project
which can be reached through www.wiesenthal.com

Those submitting pertinent
information will remain anonymous
if they so desire.

3. Why “Operation:
Last Chance” Is Being Launched in
the Baltics?

There are numerous reasons why
the Baltics were chosen as the initial place
to implement “Operation: Last Chance.” While
several relate to the specific nature of
the events of the Holocaust in Lithuania,
Latvia and Estonia, others are a product
of practical and technical considerations.
The most important are the following:

These countries had the highest
victimology rate in Europe during
the Holocaust. Not only were the local
Jewish communities almost completely
annihilated but many thousands of Jews
from other countries (Germany, Austria,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary and France) were
deported to the Baltics and murdered
in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

The extremely large number of
local collaborators who actively
participated in the mass murder of
the local Jewish communities and Jews
deported to these countries.

The fact that local police units
from each of the Baltic countries
were sent abroad, where they actively
participated in the mass murder of
Jews (especially in Belarus and Poland.)

Following the occupation of the
Baltics by the Soviet Union in 1944,
many Nazi war criminals were prosecuted
and convicted by the Soviet authorities.
These individuals can testify regarding
crimes committed during the Holocaust
that they personally witnessed without
fear of prosecution

The fact that there has not been
a single prosecution of a local Nazi
war criminal – in which the defendant
was healthy enough to attend the trial
and bear punishment if convicted – in
any of the three Baltic countries makes
the efforts to bring the guilty to
justice of unique significance for
Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian society.

With all three countries on the
verge of being invited to join NATO
and the European Union, there will
be special interest in the attitude
of the Baltic republics to this important
subject.